Not Your Villain

by C. B. Lee

  “Of course,” Bells says. “I don’t think it’s as smart as these, though.”

  Chả is zooming around in a circle.

  “Smart,” Jess repeats, laughing.

  Bells practically inhales the three slices on his plate; he didn’t realize he was so hungry. Jess and Abby draw him into conversation about school, about his brothers, the restaurant. It’s fun, even if a little different, and he knows they, too, can feel the gaps in the conversation where Emma would have fit in seamlessly.

  He pushes his empty plate away, rolls over on the floor, and listens to the MonRobots beeping at each other. He opens one eye; they’re fighting over vacuuming up a piece of cheese.

  “So, uh, do you wanna talk about it?” Jess asks. “It’s okay if you don’t. I mean, I like Carlos, but…”

  “He’s great,” Bells says listlessly.

  “I thought you already told her; or were going to really soon,” Jess says quietly.

  “You know, it’s a lot harder than it sounds!” Bells protests. “I couldn’t just… and now I definitely can’t—”

  Abby chuckles. “Why not?”

  “It isn’t funny,” Bells says. “It’s not that easy! Just to tell someone how you feel about them! It’s not the same… You and Jess had it so easy; she just up and asked you out.”

  Abby throws her head back and laughs. “Really? That’s what she said? Okay, she did try to; it was adorable.”

  “Hey!” Jess makes a face.

  Abby gives her a quick kiss. “But I’m pretty sure I’d been dropping hints forever before that, and she kind of… trailed off during the asking, so I’m not sure if that counts.”

  “Look, I don’t think it would be right for me to tell Emma how I feel now. She’s very happy with Carlos. I can’t just tell her I love her. It would put her in a terrible position.” Bells groans. “If you were me? What would you do?”

  “I don’t think I would have let it get to this point,” Abby says. “When I’m interested in someone, I let them know.”

  “I just want to stop feeling like this.”

  “Can you write it down?” Jess asks.

  Bells sits up. “What?”

  “Write her a message. Type it up, save it, don’t send it. Just… get it out so those feelings aren’t rattling around inside of you anymore.”

  Abby nods. “Jess writes all the time. She puts down feelings and stuff in journals. When I was struggling with losing my powers, writing down my thoughts helped a lot.”

  “Are you gonna be okay?” Jess asks.

  “Look, as long as she’s happy,” Bells says.

  “But you’re not,” she says quietly.

  “I will be. Look, it’ll take me some time to get over it. My feelings aren’t her problem, and I’m not going to make them her problem. She likes Carlos? Great. She and Carlos are happy together? Great. It is a good idea, though. I appreciate the help.”

  Jess draws him into a hug. She sniffles, as if she’s been holding back tears.

  Bells doesn’t cry. He’s had a long time to think about it.

  When Bells gets home, he tears a piece of paper from his sketchbook. Emma bought this one for him. She never thought his art was just a hobby; she knew it was something he truly loved to do. And she understood why he didn’t care much for drawing on a lightscreen, that he enjoys the feel of pens or colored pencils in his hand and the sound they make scraping across his paper.

  Dear Emma…

  She’s never going to see this, right? He can say anything, everything he’s always wanted to say.

  Dear Emma,

  I love you. I think I’ve loved you since we were five…

  * * *

  On Wednesday night Bells leaves home, already late for the Sidekick Squad meeting; it seems like the first time he’s seen Emma this week. He does feel better, but he’s still nervous about seeing her. He takes his motorcycle out and zips around town. Abby didn’t just take out the tracking system, she completely re-engineered the bike. Bells careens around turns, enjoying the speed and how smoothly the motorcycle corners, and finally gets to Abby’s just around sunset.

  “Hey, guys, sorry I’m late—” Bells starts, and then his heart skips.

  Emma is sitting on the couch, clutching something to her chest, sighing at everyone.

  “It was written on paper, like out of a romance movie,” she says.

  There’s no way she could have found his letter, no way she could have seen it. He fumbles, reaches for his sketchbook in his bag and, yes, it’s still there, along with some loose pieces of paper. He glances inside. The letter is still there.

  The paper Emma’s holding is heavy stock, and it’s definitely not recycled either. The paper smells like that musky cologne his dad wears sometimes, but as though his dad poured the entire bottle of it over his head. It’s making Bells’ nose prickle.

  “Oooh, that’s sweet,” Jess says, reaching for the letter. She waggles her eyebrows at Bells. As she scans the letter, her expression shows confusion.

  Emma smiles. “Go on, read it! What do you think?” For a moment, it’s as though they’re all back in middle school, giggling about their crushes on superheroes.

  Abby gives Bells an apologetic look.

  Jess coughs. “Dear Emma,” she reads.

  Dear Emma,

  I love you. I love the way your hair curls, I love your smile, how sweet you are. You are everything to me.

  Yours, Carlos

  Emma glances at it once more, and then at the three of them.

  “He loves you,” Jess says. “Aww,” she croons, but it sounds forced.

  Emma doesn’t pick up on that, though, re-reading the letter. “I know.” She blinks, tilting her head. “He is cute, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. Very cute. Handwriting the letter was a nice touch,” Bells says, seething.

  “Are you… are you going to write back? Tell him how you feel?” Jess hands the letter back to Emma.

  “I should,” Emma says. She lies back down, frowning. “He’s a good boyfriend. This was a lot less complicated before there were feelings involved,” she says, getting into a comfortable position with her head in Bells’ lap and her feet propped up on Jess’ legs.

  Bells wants to curl his hands in her hair and stroke her comfortingly, but he doesn’t. “I thought that was the point of dating,” he says.

  “He hasn’t tired of me yet,” Emma says softly. “It’s been like, three weeks. And then he writes this letter and he loves me?”

  “Abby told me she loved me pretty early on,” Jess points out. “I don’t think it was quite three weeks.”

  “You guys thought you were gonna die in the desert. I think that’s different,” Bells says.

  “Is this normal?” Emma asks. “I know I say ‘I love you guys’ to you two all the time, but it’s supposed to feel different, right? With people you’re attracted to? When you’re dating?”

  Jess nods. “Well, everyone is different, but yeah, if you like someone and wanna hang out with them—”

  “Like friends.” Emma sighs. “I don’t know, maybe that’s why it’s never worked with anyone. I mean, I couldn’t make it work with Will or Kyle or Damon or Scott or Denise—”

  “Wait, you dated Denise?” Jess looks up in surprise. “Denise Ho?”

  “Yeah, went to the movies with her once in sophomore year,” Emma chuckles at Jess’ stunned look. “What?” Emma pokes Jess in the stomach. “I was trying to figure out if I was attracted to girls!”

  Jess raises her eyebrows. “And?”

  “Well, I would have told you, wouldn’t I?” Emma shrugs. “Maybe. I haven’t entirely ruled it out. But definitely not Denise. I was bored out of my skull.”

  “That’s what you said about everyone, though,” Bells says.

  “Denise was especia
lly boring.” Emma rolls her eyes.

  Bells and Jess share a glance. He starts over. “I mean, whenever you date someone, you go out once or twice or maybe three times—”

  “Like Kyle—” Jess jumps in.

  Bells nods. Kyle Duan was a great example. “He was cool.” It was a strange two weeks, and Bells thought they would have an addition to their group. Kyle adored Emma, ate lunch with them a few times, and seemed genuinely interested in getting to know Bells and Jess.

  “I liked Kyle!” Jess grins.

  “I thought I did,” Emma says. “But I guess not. I—”

  “Lost interest,” Jess and Bells chime in.

  “Pay attention.” Emma flicks Bells in the nose as he’s sprawled upside down on the couch, listening to them go round and round about what to do next. “Do you even know what we’re working on?”

  “Find the Resistance, decode the thing, get the news leaks to stay up long enough to matter, save the world,” Bells says, deadpan.

  “It’s not that simple,” Abby says. “Everything we’ve done—trying the regular news outlets, blogs, even the conspiracy theorist forums—any mention of Captain Orion that’s different from the official story disappears.” She clenches and unclenches her fist. “What we need is a simultaneous nationwide broadcast that can’t be shut down, and we need my dad for that because I can’t— I’m not—” Abby’s voice wobbles.

  Jess squeezes her hand. “It’s going to be okay. Let’s focus on figuring out what this says.”

  Jess got a message from her parents today, a seemingly random string of numbers. Bells can’t make sense of it; apparently they made several attempts to crack the code before he got there and they got distracted by Emma’s letter. Even Brendan has given up, scurrying off to work on another project.

  Bells takes another look at the message. It’s nothing at all like the coded messages Brendan showed them from the conspiracy forums and the conversations of people of interest. This just looks like a string of numbers. “Are you sure we’re going about this in the right way?”

  Abby shrugs. “I mean, there are many ways you can go from letters to numbers and back, not to mention all the languages in the world. We’ve barely started.”

  Jess looks up from the message. “How are we doing on finding the Resistance? Hey! Bren-Bren!”

  Brendan huffs into the room with several large boxes. “Sometimes I wish I had Mom’s superstrength,” he mutters. “A little help?”

  Bells gets up, grabs the other end of the box, and helps Brendan bring it to the table. “What is all this? Books?”

  Brendan snorts. “These are logs, printed out on all the recycled paper I could find. And I had to go out and get more because there are hundreds of pages of this stuff.” He flips open the lid of the box and lifts out stacks and stacks of paper with tiny, almost unreadable lines of code. It looks like gibberish to Bells.

  “So, remember T1-2904?” Brendan points at a line of what must be encrypted chat. “They invited ST-1LE3 to this other network three months ago. Before that, their conversation on this forum,” Brendan gestures at a popular forum devoted to current broadcast shows, “was strictly about these two shows, getting to know each other, jokes, that sort of thing, but three months ago ST-1LE3 started wondering if the Collective was keeping something from them.”

  “Okay…” Emma picks up a sheet of paper.

  “And they weren’t flirting with each other,” Brendan says, triumphantly. “Okay, they were, but that’s beside the point. We now have this. It’s a new forum that T1-2904 invited ST-1LE3 to, but everything is encrypted. There are at least fifteen active members in our region alone.” Brendan bounces. “These people talk to each other about meetings and locations and they’ve pinged at least five of the keywords I was looking for, but they’re careful, even on their own forum. These are instructions for ST-1LE3 to meet them for the first time.”

  Jess blinks. “Okay, these are just characters and numbers… why did you print these out? Don’t you have a program to decode this?”

  Brendan rolls his eyes. “Yes. But this was sent as an archaic twenty-first century file type that can’t be scanned as text. It’s an image only. It’s gonna take all of us to crack this.” He rolls his shoulders and glares at all of them. “Here’s what you need to do…”

  Bells only half-listens to the instructions; the plan seems straightforward: manually scan the text for any of the special characters Brendan has noted and jot those down for a second encryption.

  Jess and Abby get to work, dutifully scratching with their pencils.

  It looks as if it’s going to be a long night. Bells sighs, trying one more time to make the numbers make sense, when Jess walks into the room, biting her lip. She glances at Bells, then at Emma, and the floor; anywhere but at Abby.

  “So, I found your dad,” she says quietly.

  “I know you know which direction he’s in,” Abby says. “How many times do I have to tell you; until we know for certain how long it would take to get there, it’s not worth going in that direction?”

  “No, I mean, I know exactly where he is,” Jess says, finally looking up and meeting Abby’s eyes. She drops her DED onto the projector, and it syncs automatically; a holo springs to flickering life: a crowd in New Bright City surrounding a podium. The mayor of New Bright City is frozen mid-clap. “This was broadcast an hour ago.”

  “I don’t understand,” Abby says.

  Jess flicks the projection, and it begins to play. The crowd roars applause, and the mayor holds her hands up and beams at the audience.

  “I’m pleased to announce an innovative new program headed up by Monroe Industries, the nation’s leading tech company. This advancement in home assistance and security will revolutionize our world and make the North American Collective a safer place. Please welcome Phillip Monroe!”

  Abby freezes, standing in front of the projection.

  The holo is life-size; her dad stands in front of her with a steady smile.

  “Thank you, Mayor Hodgeson. I am pleased to announce that, with the assistance of the energy bill just passed by the NAC, the new line of MonRobots is now available for purchase. And, any household with a MonRobot to trade in can have the new version at reduced cost.”

  The audience applauds as a curtain parts behind Phillip, and a new MonRobot hovers onto the stage with a distinct electronic whir. It’s tall, almost the height of a small child, and capable looking, with a square head and a long, slanted body. A little arm protrudes from its side and waves at the audience while the video display behind it demonstrates how the MonRobot can be helpful with cooking, cleaning, childcare, and more.

  The MonRobot says in a monotone, “Hello. I am your personal MonRobot. I am pleased to assist you in your household chores and activities.”

  Abby’s jaw drops open, and she flicks at her DED. “I need to tell my mom. This can’t—this can’t be happening. He’s working with Stone?” She throws her hands up in exasperation. “Of course, Mom isn’t answering because she doesn’t have access to the Net wherever she is.”

  Emma scrunches up her face. “Who’s Stone?”

  Bells replays the broadcast. He isn’t sure he likes the new design. All the previous MonRobots were round or ovoid. There are variations in size and function across the different MonRobot lines, but Bells likes the egg-shape.

  He plays the broadcast again and concentrates on Phillip’s face. “Is it just me? He doesn’t look too happy announcing what is supposedly a huge breakthrough for his company.” Phillip Monroe looks so much older than in the holos in Abby’s home. His face has a sunken, haggard look, and there are bags under his eyes, almost like when Genevieve was…

  “Tantalum!” Bells freezes the holo and enlarges the frame. “Look, just under his sleeves. Those? Those aren’t bracelets.”

  Abby gasps. “I knew it. He would have contacted
me and Mom the first minute he got the chance, but he can’t even use his powers.”

  “Why are they keeping him?” Emma asks. “Didn’t you say Orion said they already had the plans for the new robots?”

  “Yeah, but even if they had the plans, if my dad didn’t cooperate, they couldn’t build those things without our factory machines, and they didn’t know a thing about those.” Abby frowns at the new MonRobot design. “I’m not sure these are the ones we were worried about, though. Did the broadcast talk about new features?”

  They watch it again. It’s just a bunch of fanfare over household chores.

  Emma looks up from her DED; she’s on the Monroe Industries page on the Net. “They are more efficient than the current MonRobots: less time to charge, quicker cleaning, can do all different types of floors, can go up and down stairs easier. There are a few tweaks here and there, but it doesn’t look like anything to worry about.”

  Bells glances at the square design of the new robots. “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t worry about it.” He puts a hand on Abby’s shoulder. “I’m glad we know where he is. I mean, it opens up a huge set of new problems, but…”

  “Thanks. I’m not sure what to think. It’s almost worse than knowing he’s being held captive in a dark cell. I can see him, but I can’t talk to him or…”

  “Let’s focus on something else for now,” Emma says, pointing at the little round robot on Abby’s floor vacuuming itself into the corner. “I think we aren’t in danger from attacking robots anytime soon.”

  They work quietly until Jess sighs and says, “This is going to take forever. What about the new MonRobots? Let’s go back to that, maybe there’s something we can learn about them, if they are a threat.”

  “Well, the main production line is here in Andover,” Abby says, touching her chin thoughtfully. “If my dad really is making the prototypes available, he would have the plans in the Monroe Industries archive.” She leaves and comes back in a moment with a box labeled “ABBY’S LAB.” She rummages until she makes a triumphant noise and holds aloft a keycard with the Monroe Industries logo. “This still works. I should be able to walk right in and make a copy, but my mom made me promise not to set foot in that building again.”